October 21, 2014

The U.S. Supreme Court on October 18 rejected an emergency request from the U.S. Department of Justice to prohibit Texas from requiring voters to produce photo identification in order to vote. In a rare public dissent of the court’s decision not to take up a case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg characterized the Texas photo ID law as discriminatory: “The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.” Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined Ginsburg in the dissent.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a fiery dissent countering the Court’s majority decision on the Texas voter ID law.

Republican state legislatures in several states have passed voter ID laws on the grounds that they are needed to prevent election fraud. The Democratic Party and such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union claim that the laws were passed to discourage minorities from voting. Before the 2012 presidential election, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai publicly stated that a recent voter ID law passed in his state “would allow Governor [Mitt] Romney to win Pennsylvania.” Critics claimed Turzai had unintentionally revealed the true objective behind such laws.

Additional World Book articles:

• Courts 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Elections 2013 (a Back in Time article)